Terror
by eclipsed heart
Summary: Peeta's always been there for Katniss, to comfort her when she awakes from her horrible nightmares, terrors that make her feel like she never left the arena. What she doesn't know is that Peeta also has his fears, haunting fears he can't escape…ONESHOT.


AN: POST _MOCKINGJAY_! Need I say more?

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Terror

Summary: Peeta has always been there for Katniss, to comfort her when she awakes from her horrible nightmares, terrors that make her feel like she never left the arena. But what she doesn't know is that Peeta also has his fears, haunting fears he can't escape…

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Peeta holds the bread in his hands, just the way it always starts out. Katniss is in front of him, half-crazed with starvation. He gives her the bread.

Time warps and suddenly he is in a crowd. It is a bad day, he knows. All the children are dressed in their best and Effie Trinket stands before the crowd, digging for a name. Primrose Everdeen. Soon enough, Katniss is rushing to the stage, volunteering to be the tribute, just as Peeta knows she will. Prim protests and then Gale plucks her from the stage easily. Haymitch comes along and gives his two cents, before unceremoniously passing out. Effie Trinket tries to regain her composure, and crosses the stage to the other glass ball, picking up the slip of paper Peeta knows will read his name.

The world seems to fade away and Peeta is standing on his platform in the arena, looking straight ahead at the Cornucopia. The gong rings, throwing everything into mayhem and chaos.

Next thing Peeta knows, he's with the Careers. He's seen Katniss in the tree, after they killed the girl by the fire. The Careers have stopped, and he's not about to give them the chance to clue in on Katniss's presence.

Now he's on the ground and the tracker jacker nest is falling. Peeta is on his feet before he knows it, running. He sees Katniss in the tree that the nest fell from and knows she meant to kill them, to kill him. Still, he comes back and tells her to run.

He's sick. Above him is the rock ceiling of a damp cave. Katniss is helping him now, not trying to kill him. He tells her that he will die. She kisses him and says he's not allowed.

But all of sudden, it's just them in the arena, after the night of the muttations. Claudius Templesmith's voice is telling them that the rules have changed and only one of them can leave the arena alive. Peeta slips his knife from his belt. Katniss responds immediately, loading her last arrow into her bow and pointing it directly at his heart. Peeta knows that if she really wants to, she'll kill him. He can barely move. He throws his weapon into the water, showing his surrender. He braces himself for the end, the end of his life, the end of everything.

But it doesn't come.

Next thing he knows, the nightlock is at his lips and his instinct screams at him to chew and swallow. Which he nearly does. But then Claudius's voice is back, telling them that they've both won the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games.

But his dream isn't finished. It always carries him through the night, holding him in so tight a grip that he can't get out alone.

It's the clock arena. It's bad enough that he's back in the Hunger Games, but this time he volunteered, to keep Katniss safe.

People die off slower than usual, because every single one of them has been in the Games before and knows what they're doing. Which Peeta knows will it make much harder to stay alive.

It's his last day there. Beetee is finalizing his plan for breaking down the arena. Katniss has to go help somewhere else. Peeta almost follows her, but he knows he shouldn't.

He's in the Capitol. He can't feel anything, nothing but pain. His ears ring with screams, his own and others. He opens his swollen eyes as much as he can. It's the Avox girl. That's why her scream sounds so strange.

He squeezes his eyes shut, ignoring the pain it causes, so he doesn't have to watch her. But he still hears her screaming.

Peeta is hallucinating. It's the tracker jacker venom, pulsing through his brain. He's scared, oh so scared. Katniss's face floats into his mind and fear floods every part of his body. This girl, whoever she is, must die. She's out to get Peeta, he knows. But he won't let her kill him. He'll kill her first.

The rebels are saving him. It hurts too much to move, but he knows he has no choice.

Before he knows it, His aching hands are grasping something, killing something.

Katniss. He's strangling her. He can see fear in her eyes, but he feels so scared himself. She's tried to kill him. She is his enemy. He won't let her hurt him anymore.

Peeta is pleading for Katniss to just kill him. He just went insane and tried to murder her yet again, killing a member of their team. They'd cuffed him for it and locked him in a closet, but now he's free. Boggs is dead and he knows he's the biggest threat to Katniss's mission to infiltrate the Capitol and assassinate the president. And at this point, he feels that he would just be better off dead.

But Katniss won't kill him.

Katniss has her bow in hand. The arrow is aimed at President Snow. She's shaking, though he's sure she doesn't realize it. Snow is trembling, but Peeta sees that it's from laughter, not fear. Katniss changes her target and releases the arrow before anyone can see that her focus has changed to Alma Coin, who drops dead.

But now he's back in the Capitol, being beaten senseless after warning the rebels in Thirteen of the impending air attack. Pain is everywhere and he feels blood leaking out of him. He doesn't know if he has much more to spare though, after all the torture he's been put through in the last few weeks. He coughs and sputters, feeling sick. But his attackers have no mercy. They continue to hurt him, until he can't see anything but blood, blood on the white tiles beneath him, blood on his hands, blood on their hands, blood clouding his vision as it slides over his eyeballs…

Peeta wakes with a start, gasping for the air he feels like he can't get enough of. Katniss is beside him, undisturbed. He doesn't want to wake her with his silly nightmares.

He gets out of the bed, wiping the sweat from his brow. _It's just a dream_, he tells himself, but there's a nagging voices inside him that shouts at him that these are not dreams.

These are memories.

Peeta has never told Katniss exactly what happened to him at the Capitol, even after all these years. He knows she's haunted by nightmares of the arena, and the time that they spent there, but sometimes he's not sure how horrific the arena is in comparison with what he saw, heard, and felt in the Capitol. The Hunger Games had been the government's way of showing power, control, and their sick entertainment. They'd been absolutely sadistic, watching children kill other children violently for their pleasure. But at least with the Games they'd had a halfway decent cover-up. At the Capitol, they'd hurt him and had enjoyed it, no cover-ups necessary. And because of that, it had been even more horrific at times.

The arena had some justification: you had to kill to survive, and you could make the deaths quick. But at the Capitol, they killed for fun, and they made it slow.

Peeta wanders into the kitchen, turns on the faucet, and splashes water on his face. Then he grabs a glass and fills it with the water, chugging it down.

His breathing is finally slowing, his heart relaxing. He rests his hands on the counter, leaning forward, feeling for a moment like he might vomit. When his stomach settles, he begins to concentrate on his thoughts. It's as though all the horrific images of his nightmares are scratched on the backs of his eyelids, playing over and over. They're not so vivid as they are in his dreams, but he still doesn't want to see them, or even remember them.

Sometimes he wonders why he can still remember everything in such perfect detail, like it happened yesterday, not years and years ago.

Peeta knows that he probably isn't the only victim of the nightmares revolving around the Hunger Games and the revolution. So many other people lived through all those things. He knows for a fact that Katniss still dreams about them, though he doesn't know exactly what she dreams of. Is it Rue? Mags? Prim? Gale, even? Does she see President Snow, surrounded by the sickly smell of roses? Or is it Alma Coin, falling to her death? Does she see Cato, being devoured by muttations? Or Finnick? Is she watching Haymitch on the screen, insides spilling out, as his last opponent dies? Is she seeing Annie in all her madness? Beetee rigging the arena? Johanna attacking her?

Or is it Peeta that she sees attacking her?

Peeta shudders. That's one of the many things he hates himself for. He had almost killed Katniss, more thoroughly than their opponents in the arena or the sadists in the Capitol had ever been able to.

Sometimes, Peeta wonders about Katniss. She'd hated the arena and the Capitol so much, yet when it came down to it, she'd voted to have the Hunger Games one last time, for the Capitol's children. Peeta had thought it the cruelest revenge.

Now, people still know about the Games, even people who had been born after they'd ended. It is taught about in schools, but never in such detail. One boy and one girl from each district. Selected at random. All twenty-four required to go to the Capitol. The one ever-changing arena. Broadcast on television for the whole nation to watch. Only one person could leave alive and be declared the winner.

Except for, of course, the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games, which had two winners, both from the same district. They never gave names or district numbers. They just said that those two people were all it took to ignite a full-fledged rebellion against the Capitol, which turned into a revolution.

Then came the Quarter Quell of the Seventy-Fifth Hunger Games, where nearly half the competitors escaped alive. They still wouldn't give names, and it had been agreed that names would not be included until all involved had died, to protect their identities.

That's why Peeta's daughter has no idea.

The textbooks continue to relay the story of the revolution, including the death of the old president and the immediate assassination of the new one. Those were two names that were included: Snow and Coin. The opposing faces of the revolution.

The mockingjay is also mentioned once or twice, but never as the symbol of the growing rebellion. All the Capitol's sickly muttations got a mention: the tracker jackers, the jabberjays… They were all there.

An involuntary shiver runs down Peeta's spine. Sometimes he swears he can still feel the tracker jacker venom pumping through his veins, pounding in his skull. Like he's still at the Capitol.

Peeta has never left District Twelve, as he still calls it in his mind, ever since he had returned to Katniss after tying up the remaining loose ends in the Capitol. He had just stayed with Katniss.

And now they have a real family.

Peeta thinks about going back to bed, but he doesn't want to face the horrors that await him there.

Still, he needs sleep. Katniss might worry if she found him gone and he doesn't want to explain his nightmares to her. She'll only worry.

So he stumbles back towards their room, absentmindedly rubbing his eyes, praying sleep will come quickly.

It's dark, so at first he thinks his eyes are tricking him. But then, as he squints into the darkness, he convinces himself it's no lie:

Katniss is sprawled across the bed, her limbs twisted in weird, unnatural angles. Her eyes are popping out of her skull, blood spattered all over her face. Her throat is slit, her neck broken, and there is a spear protruding from her chest, pinning her to the bed.

Peeta gasps in horror and nearly topples over from the shock. He bites his tongue to hold in his scream.

How could it have happened? He wants to know. If only he hadn't left…

But how had she been found? There are no names in the history books, no one knows that Katniss Everdeen, wife of Peeta Mellark, was involved in the revolution, one of the only living survivors of the Hunger Games. No one knows.

Well, actually, some people do know. People who were there and witnessed the action. But who would do such a thing?

Peeta goes back into the kitchen to sort out his thoughts. Katniss is dead, he thinks to himself, breathing slowly in and out. The killer might still be here, he realizes. And that births his next thought:

_The kids_.

Peeta is suddenly alert, tapping into his predator instincts that he developed to survive in the arena, thanks to Katniss. He has to protect his children.

Just as he turns to go to their room, prepared to stay there all night if he has to, he hears a little voice say, "Daddy?"

He nearly jumps a mile, and then he wants to shout for joy. She's okay. That must mean her little brother is fine, too.

"Hey, sweetie. You okay?"

He has to get them out of here, Peeta resolves. It's no longer safe here.

"Yeah. I just couldn't sleep. What about you? Why are you here?"

"I just woke up, sweetheart. That's all."

Peeta sits down at the kitchen table, pulls her onto his lap, and prepares to tell her the ugly truth.

She curls into his chest. "You're so warm, Daddy."

She shuts her eyes and Peeta smiles, stroking her black hair. Katniss's hair. She looks so peaceful and innocent. Peeta can't burst her bubble.

"What woke you up?" she asks him suddenly. Peeta doesn't know how to respond.

"Bad dream," he murmurs at last.

"I thought grown-ups didn't have bad dreams, Daddy. How can you? You're not afraid of anything." She looks up at him with her big sapphire eyes.

"You'd be surprised, sweetie."

"What was it about?"

Peeta freezes. Does he really want her to know? He could always make something up, or tell her the truth…

"Your mother died. That's something I'm afraid of."

She cuddles up to him more. "I'm afraid of that, too, Daddy. But it's okay now, because it was just a dream. It's not real."

Peeta can't tell her just how real it is.

He ruffles her dark hair. "Thanks, sweetie. But I think you should go back to bed now."

She nods wearily. "Okay." She kisses his cheek. "I love you, Daddy." And then she hops off his lap and back to the comfort of her bed.

"Love you, too, sweetheart," he whispers after her.

Now, he has to see what he can do to soften the blow for his children in the morning. He figures the he should clean up some, make the scene not look so terrifying. Get rid of the spear, clean up the blood, close her eyes…that sort of stuff. He could tell the kids that she's asleep and that she won't wake up for a long time.

Sadly, Peeta saunters back to the room. He doesn't want to see her again, not like that. Still, he knows he must.

So he flips on the lights.

And there is Katniss.

She stirs and he at last sees that his daughter was right: it's not real. Katniss is under the covers, safe and sound.

"Peeta?" she mumbles, turning to him. "Is everything okay?"

Peeta grins, so incredibly relieved. She's definitely alive.

He flips the lights back off and climbs into bed beside her. He kisses her forehead. "Yeah. Everything's perfect. It was just a dream."

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AN: Whoot! for my thirtieth fanfiction! I hope you guys all enjoyed it very much.(:

REVIEWS are like rain. Which Los Angeles seems to be lacking as of late. It "rained" twice this week, but it was about the wimpiest rain I've ever seen. Care to send some real rain my way? REVIEW!


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